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From area51:

Would it be possible to get something that would allow us to display Go and Chess positions on this site?

This has been raised as a possible objection towards integrating the Go and Chess StackExchange proposals here.

At this time, I don't know what exact software is needed, but I can research if necessary. If anyone who sees this has an opinion on it, please let us know!

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  • Uploading images wouldn't be sufficient? I know there's plenty of sites that let you drag and drop pieces onto a board and generate and image for you.
    – Gordon Gustafson
    Commented Apr 16, 2011 at 14:59
  • It would be good to use one of these on this answer: boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/3379/… The uppercase/lowercase style is easy to read when there are only a few pieces, but with a whole board full of pieces...!
    – tttppp
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 7:35
  • @tttppp, I've submitted an edit with a diagram. You're right, for complex positions, it's difficult. At least in this case, it helped to know that all pieces were on the board and were both attacking and defending other pieces.
    – Dave DuPlantis
    Commented Jul 11, 2011 at 16:45
  • I've read that this sort of support is also requested by several people wanting to make this a Magic the Gathering friendly environment. From the very simple :p: displaying a plains symbol sort of support to more involved :Atog: showing a picture of the Atog card. Is there substantial overhead or other issue involved with including these types of features?
    – Stephen
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 20:31
  • Of course standard playing card smilies (or whatever) would be helpful too. Slippery slope, where do you stop?
    – Stephen
    Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 17:52
  • @stephen - I don't know. If a strong consensus develops here on particular solutions then hopefully the devs will weigh in.
    – Pat Ludwig Mod
    Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 19:18
  • As a stopgap, for Chess there is a board image builder here which works quite well. It's linked from the chess tag wiki as well.
    – ire_and_curses
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 23:21

4 Answers 4

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Just as a quick update on the current state: @balpha provided us with an excellent diagram renderer for Go. I'm quoting his answer from mGoSE:

I doubt anybody working at Stack Exchange is going to take time to learn how to write an SGF parser just for a private beta site.

Sounds like fun -- challenge accepted :)

No, I didn't write an SGF parser, but the arguably most important thing – Sensei-style diagrams – will work now. It's not feature-complete (e.g. arrows aren't implemented), but at least you can see normal board situations.

$$Wcm31 This is the example diagram from the L19 forum thread http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=226
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . X X X . . . . * . . . . O O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . C . . . . . W . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . # . . . . . S . . . . . @ . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . Y . . . . . T . . . . . Q . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . Z . . . . . M . . . . . P . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . a . b . c . d . x . y . z . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------

Indent the markup by four spaces (i.e. make it a "code block", using Ctrl-K or the "{}" button).

My renderer uses the HTML5 Canvas, so your browser needs to support that – but these days, all of them except IE8 do. And even without the rendering, the diagrams in code blocks are of course still reasonably readable.

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  • 1
    (doesn't work on met apparently)
    – mafu
    Commented Dec 14, 2011 at 10:37
  • @balpha - Any chance this could be adapted to implement Chess positions in a similar way? Much of your code looks reusable, and us poor Chess players need some love too...! ;)
    – ire_and_curses
    Commented Jan 6, 2012 at 18:21
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Hi, looks like you didn't get much help on this matter. This link should get you started with GO diagrams:

http://senseis.xmp.net/?WebViewers

For chess:

http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/diaeng.htm

http://www.caissa.com/chess-tools/chess-diagram-generator.php

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-diagram-generator.php

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  • Thanks for the pointers!
    – Pat Ludwig Mod
    Commented Apr 24, 2011 at 15:17
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For go refer to my older post: https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/792/about-related-existing-sites/1913#1913

On lifein19x19 we have three different go specific features:

  1. Sgf Diagrams
    A Sgf diagram represents a game tree that can be navigated.
    These are based on Eidogo which is an AGPL licensed piece of javascript. The essential features require no server side support. There are some other in browser sgf viewers, but I think this one is the best. License might be a problem though.
  2. Board diagrams
    Renders a one time snapshot of a board. The text describes the stones present on the board. There is no game tree.
    We use http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoWiki%2FSLtxt2PNG which is written on php 5. But if necessary I can write something similar in C#.
  3. Go specific "smilies"
    These are short strings that the bbcode parser replaces with go specific icons such as numbered or marked stone. For example ":w10:" becomes a small image of a white stone with the number 10 on it.
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Since the accepted answer gives relatively little detail, it may be useful to see my more detailed answer to How do we enter Go Boards on this site?

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